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Turbot

A whole turbot fish cooked with vinegar, herbs, and white wine, finished with a butter anchovy-caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and cleanse the fish thoroughly.

  2. Rub the fish with vinegar for firmness.

  3. Place the fish belly up in a fish plate and cover tightly with a cloth.

  4. Boil in salted water with vinegar; skim to prevent discoloration.

  5. Add the fish to the boiling water.

  6. Cook until done, then drain.

  7. Carefully remove the cloth and transfer the fish to a dish.

Poach with herbs

  1. In a stewpan, layer thyme, parsley, sweet herbs, and sliced onion.

  2. Place the fish on top.

  3. Sprinkle with herbs, chives, and sweet basil.

  4. Cover with white wine, vinegar, bay salt, and whole pepper.

  5. Cook over gentle heat, gradually increasing until done; leave fish in the liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and add anchovies, capers, chives, pepper, salt, nutmeg, flour, vinegar, and water.

  2. Shake until combined and heat through.

Serve

  1. Pour sauce over the fish before serving.

  2. Garnish the fish with oyster patties or fried oysters.

  3. Serve with lobster or gravy sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turbot fish
Firm white flesh that holds its shape through boiling and poaching.
Butter
Melted into the sauce to give it richness and a smooth, rounded texture.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce, adding savory depth and a salty background note.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a cohesive sauce.
White wine
Flavors the poaching liquid with mild acidity and aroma.

The step that matters

Keep the fish gently cooked in the liquid. Fish proteins toughen and dry out when boiled hard, so a gentle heat that rises slowly keeps the flesh moist and tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, fish, vinegar, thyme, parsley, chive, basil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, fish, vinegar, thyme, parsley, chive, basil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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